Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Commentary Tidbits

Washington Post: Looking for God in the colorful world of America’s Christian entertainment destinations

Corner of Church and State: Pro-Trump pastor whitewashes history of pastors during Jim Crow—including the history of his church

Christian Today: Mark Driscoll is hosting a conference on building healthy churches. Seriously.

Salon: Anti-choice activists attempt to hijack Black Lives Matter to shame women for abortion

The Advocate: God vs. the Constitution

Religion News Service: The Mormon fallout of legalized same-sex marriage

Daily Beast: Why C-FAM, the Catholic Fundamentalists You’ve Never Heard Of, Just Cozied Up to Iran

Huffington Post: New GOP Platform Aims To Make The Christian Right Even More Powerful

Vice: We Talked to a Quiverfull Escapee About Helping Women Leave the Movement


2 comments:

  1. Zosimus the HeathenJuly 21, 2016 at 9:40 AM

    That piece on C-FAM was interesting. It's not the first time, though, that I've heard of Catholics cozying up to hardline Islamic regimes - way back in 1994, the Vatican apparently created a bit of controversy by seeking to ally itself with various repressive Middle Eastern governments at some big UN conference on family planning (an old news article on this can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/18/world/vatican-seeks-islamic-allies-in-un-population-dispute.html).

    I've had a weird fascination with Catholic fundamentalists for a long time now; I find them a bit of a strange and scary bunch. Probably got to know quite a few personally way back in the '90s (a friend of mine from university was heavily involved with the Catholic charismatic movement), and while most of them seemed OK, they tended to freak me out when they started "speaking in tongues" (ie uttering whatever gibberish came into their heads) and engaging in other weirdness (I also had one or two of them taking it upon themselves to save my soul, which certainly didn't help). There also used to be this weird mob (I never found out who they were) who'd occasionally put these awful, awful full-page ads in the local paper which would usually start with the line "Mankind, stop killing babies in their mothers' wombs" (with an accompanying picture of a suitably angry-looking Christ), and go rapidly downhill from there! (Lots of threats of eternal damnation, claims by supposed apparitions of the Virgin Mary that the vast majority of humanity was going to hell, and good stuff like that.)

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    1. Zosimus -- Across religions, fundamentalists are more alike than they are different, so I'm not surprised that a Christian Right group would share values with fundamentalist Muslims.

      Those Catholic fundamentalists sound intense! I've seen Catholic anti-abortion protesters outside of abortion clinics, and they're a fierce bunch.

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